Phyllis Barron

Mabel Phyllis Barron (19 March 1890 – 23 November 1964) was an English designer, known for her textile printing workshop with Dorothy Larcher.

Barron was born in Taplow, Buckinghamshire, the daughter of Walter Barron and Alice Clark Barron. As a teen, she encountered block printing when a tutor gave her some old printing blocks to try. She attended the Slade School of Fine Art, where she studied fine art under Henry Tonks, but continued her independent efforts to experiment with printing and learn about dyeing techniques.

Some of Barron's earliest commissions came from the Duke of Westminster's architect, Detmar Blow; she created all the textiles used in the Duke's yacht, in his estate offices and in his hunting lodge.

In 1923, Barron and Dorothy Larcher began to share a workshop in Parkhill Road, Hampstead, dyeing and block-printing their designs on textiles, and selling the results to interior decorators and fashion designers. Barron favored geometric prints. Enid Marx served as their apprentice from 1925 to 1927. Barron and Larcher were featured in a show of "Handmade Textiles and Pots" at Heal's Mansard Gallery in London. Artist Paul Nash said of Barron in 1926, "She is a true designer and a true craftswoman."

Barron and Larcher relocated their work to Hambutts House, Painswick, Gloucestershire, in 1930. Stables on the property became a workshop with a large dyeing vat for working with indigo. The grounds became gardens filled with flowers and other plants useful to their work, either practically or as visual inspiration. Among their major commissions they provided hand-printed linen for the interior furnishings, including upholstery and curtains, of a new wing at Girton College, Cambridge in 1932, and curtains for the choir stalls at Winchester Cathedral.

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